When I contemplate the immense advances in science and discoveries in the arts which have been made within the period of my life, I look forward with confidence to equal advances by the present generation, and have no doubt they will consequently be as much wiser than we have been as we than our fathers were, and they than the burners of witches.

Nature [has] implanted in our breasts a love of others, a sense of duty to them, a moral instinct, in short, which prompts us irresistibly to feel and to succor their distresses.

A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a people who mean to be free.

The day is not distant when we must bear and adopt [the abolition of slavery], or worse will follow.

It would not be for the public good to have [a majority in Congress of one party] greater [than] two to one.

It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.

It should be our endeavor to cultivate the peace and friendship of every nation, even of that which has injured us most.